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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22588795">Forging Anew</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter'>crossingwinter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 13:27:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,826</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22588795</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Needle breaks, and Arya goes to Gendry.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arya Stark/Gendry Waters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>244</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Forging Anew</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieraembers/gifts">Kieraembers</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>a secret santa gift for kieraembers &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gendry was working in the forge when Arya appeared.</p><p>This in itself was not abnormal.  Arya had a tendency to just appear out of the blue while he was working.  She’d done it ever since she was a girl.  She’d watch him curiously, think of something stupid to say that she would inevitably call him stupid for when he told her she was being stupid. He liked Arya sticking her head through the door, just because she could.  It made him feel, well, cared for.</p><p>But that was Arya, always making everyone feel cared for.  She wasn’t like any noble he’d ever met before.  </p><p>What was abnormal, though, was that her face was red—her nose, most specifically—and her eyes were even redder.  In her hands she held the pieces of that small sword she’d always loved so much.</p><p>“Can you fix it?” she asked and she sounded younger than she ever had when they’d been on the road in the riverlands.  She shoved the pieces at him and the way her eyes are bright with tears…  </p><p>Gendry was not the sort to hug.  He was not the affectionate sort.  But the way she was trying so hard not to keep crying, well it broke his heart and it made him want to pull her into his arm for a hug.  He wasn’t the hugging sort, though.  But if he were, it would be for Arya.</p><p>He eyed the pieces.  It looked like the sword had been cut clean through.  “Valyrian steel?” he asked her as he examines the break.  That was the only thing that could cut clean through castle forged steel like this.  The blade of this sword had always been so very thin.</p><p>“It was an accident,” Arya said, clearly trying to roll her eyes, to play it off as though it wasn’t a big deal.  “I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t cut my hand off.”</p><p>“Yes, that’s a good thing,” Gendry said.  Jaime Lannister had learned to fight with his left hand.  Not well, but he had learned in the end.  He was quite sure that Arya could have learned with her right hand too.  For all he knew, she already could fight with her right hand.  Seemed like the sort of thing she would have pushed herself to do.  </p><p>He gave her a look.  “Might not look exactly the same.  I’m not Mikken.  But I can make the blade whole again.”</p><p>The look on her face took his breath away.  Oh.  </p><p>“Thank you.”  Her voice sounded wet again, like she was having trouble not crying.  </p><p>He set to work.  He removed the hilt—battered and scarred, but he knew better than to ask if he should replace it.   The hilt would be what remained of the original sword.  Battered and scarred like all of us, he thought.  Then he set the steel heat.  </p><p>“Jon had it made for me,” Arya said quietly.  “Before we even left for King’s Landing and before he went to the Wall.”</p><p>Well that explained everything.  It was all she had left of him.  </p><p>“A good gift for you,” Gendry said, going to his molds and shifting through them.  Like as not, he’d want to completely reforge the thing.  Most of his molds were for longswords, greatswords, swords that could cut through the dead.  Not a child’s first sword.  </p><p>He frowned.</p><p>If Mikken had made it, some of his old molds were left.  And chances are it was one of the last swords he’d made before he died.  Gendry went to the chest in the corner of the forge and began to dig through it.  </p><p>“It was,” Arya agreed.  “It was perfect.”  He could hear the feeling in her voice, the memories he knew and the ones he didn’t.  He could hear her own wonder at herself, at the things she’d encountered, at the things she’d lived through with this little sword.  “It’s called Needle,” she said.  “Never was much of a lady.  This was my sewing needle.”</p><p>“You are a lady,” Gendry said firmly, plodding the habit of an old conversation, pulling it on as comfortably as an old shoe.</p><p>“Not the way Sansa is,” Arya said, but gone is the bitterness that statement might once have held.  “Not the way my mother was.”</p><p>“No, you’re a better lady than most of the lords I’ve met,” Gendry said.  “If all ladies and lords were like you, maybe I would have accepted the queen’s offer of Storm’s End.”  Sometimes, he wondered what would have happened if he had.  I’m not a Lord, he’d told the Dragon Queen.  A knight, yes, and a blacksmith.  </p><p>And are we what we’re born, or what we make ourselves?</p><p>I wouldn’t be making myself a lord, though.  You’d be making me one.  I made myself the other two, though.</p><p>And Arya wouldn’t have come south with him.  She was always the one going on about bloody packs, and maybe it was because he’d lived through a real winter, a brutal winter, the worst winter since the Long Night, but he had no desire to break away from her pack.  He’d never been built for ambition.  He’d take being treated well by someone he trusted to treat others well too.  </p><p>“You’re like me, though,” Arya said after a pause.  “I don’t suffer idiots.”</p><p>“So I’m not an idiot?” he asked and she growled at him.  He laughed.  </p><p>“I’m being nice to you because you’re going to fix my sword,” she pretended to concede.  He looked down again at Mikken’s old chest.  </p><p>At the very bottom, underneath the old and battered molds…</p><p>There it was.  There it had to have been.  He picks it up and goes back to where he’d put Needle’s hilt.  Yes.  That fit properly.  Good to know he still had it for Arya or—</p><p>He swallowed.  That was an unhelpful thought.  He’d done all he could to put thoughts of marrying her aside the moment she’d announced to all the world she wouldn’t marry.  He’d put thoughts of her loving him aside, done everything to respect what she said she wanted for herself because if there was one person in the world who would always get what she wanted, come hell or high water, it was Arya Stark.</p><p>But that didn’t mean there weren’t moments like this one, where she made him laugh, or smile, or yell—moments where he wanted to hug her, hold her, press his face into her hair, imagine forging a sword for their child…</p><p>“The lords of the stormlands saw my father, not me.”  Arya saw me, though.   Not any of those things.  “So they’re not like you.  Not like me.  And I’d hate ruling them.  Just because the queen wanted to make me one of them doesn’t mean I was one of them.  You’re not like any lord or lady or king or queen I’ve ever met.  You’re better than them.”</p><p>The smile Arya gave him at that—small, almost shy.  She really was terrible at hearing praise.  Especially of her being a lady.</p><p>But that was always the issue.  To her being a lady meant being a woman; to him being a lady meant her titles.  He wondered if she’d worked that out too.  </p><p>He wondered if that was why she said she never wanted to marry.  Did she think herself a lesser woman?</p><p>But he would never ask her that.  Not ever.  Because she’d call him stupid, get mad at him, and then pretend the conversation had never happened, but remember it and hurt.  That’s what she did, after all, hold on to her hurts.</p><p>And today was not a day for hurting, not when she’d come to him in tears because Jon Snow’s gift to her had been broken.  </p><p>“How long will it take?” she asked him, nodding to the melting steel.  </p><p>“Few days,” he said.  “I’ll bring it to you when it’s done.”</p><p>She nodded.  </p><p>“Thank you.”  Her voice was quiet as she said it.  Then she was gone.</p><p>-</p><p>He polished the hilt of the sword for her.  After several hours of back and forth, he also decided to rewrap the leather around the handle with something fine and dark from the tanner.  He paid more for it than he should have, considering the size of the sword, and how likely it was to be used regularly, but it was for Arya and the idea of giving it lesser leather was not even a thought to be entertained.</p><p>She popped in for the next three days to check his progress, but never stayed very long.  There were always things that would call her away.  </p><p>He beat the steel and with every strike of his hammer, he thought of the red of her eyes, the smallness of her smile.</p><p>He finished the blade quickly enough.  It was small, and even if he’d reinforced the steel a little bit, the blade was thin and short compared to the other swords he made for the castle.  </p><p>Last of all, he beat his mark into the blade.  He wasn’t Mikken, and yes, he had the old smith’s markers somewhere, but this blade, reforged wasn’t Mikken’s it was his.  Arya would understand that.</p><p>Indeed, it was the first thing she seemed to notice when he handed her Needle, reforged.  The bull sat neatly just below the hilt, strong and angry.  Like you, she’d joked the first time he’d shown her the mark.  </p><p>She ran her thumb over it.  “I’m glad you put yours,” she said looking up at him.  And suddenly her cheeks are flushing red.</p><p>“Why are you blushing?”</p><p>“I’m not.”</p><p>“You are.”</p><p>“It’s hot in here.”</p><p>“No hotter than it ever is, but your face isn’t ever this red.”</p><p>She glared at him, that ferocious look on her face that he’d known since she was barely more than a little girl.  His lips twitched upwards, seeing the shade of the girl she had been in the woman she is now.</p><p>And then suddenly her arms were around his neck and her lips were on his and he let out a cry of surprise because this was a dream, wasn’t it?  Her kissing him.  She’d stopped before he’d even really realized what she was doing, before he could even let himself enjoy it.</p><p>“Sorry,” she mumbled but her arms were still around his.  Which was how he realized that his arms were resting around her waist, holding her close to him.  </p><p>“Don’t be,” he murmured.  “Not unless you really are.”</p><p>She swallowed for a moment and he saw an uncharacteristic flicker of fear there.  Not fear of death, or violence, or war horrors unknown.  </p><p>The fear of getting what she wanted.</p><p>He swallowed.</p><p>Her body was warm against his, and she bit her lip, nervous.  </p><p>As if I wasn’t always yours.</p><p>And he dropped his head to hers, his lips to hers, and told her so in a way he never had before.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hey! hope you enjoyed! <a href="http://linktr.ee/crossingwinter">here i am</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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